More decades ago than I like to mention, I did babysitting at a rate of twenty-five cents an hour, often for neighbors whose houses were within walking distance of ours. One of those families was the Coxs, three homes away. They had two kids\u2014Normie, who was in my younger brother\u2019s class, and a girl whose name I can\u2019t remember\u2014Vicki maybe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was back in \u201cthe old days” when Bisbee had three whole TV channels. The nighttime news came on at ten PM followed by the \u201clate movie\u201d which started at 10:30. By the way, the movies were generally sponsored by either Sam Levitz Furniture or Aqua Net Hair Spray. I never bought any furniture from Sam Levitz, but I used my share of Aqua Net. That stuff helped create the iron-maiden hairdos of the fifties and sixties. It was probably also harmful to the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One babysitting night, knowing my clients would be late, I plucked a book, The Foxes of Harrow, <\/em>off their bookshelf during the news. I had just started reading it when the late movie came on\u2014The Foxes of Harrow. <\/em>That coincidence was just too weird. I turned off the movie, put the book back on the shelf, and just sat there waiting until Mr. And Mrs. Cox got back home. By the way, I just Googled The Foxes of Harrow. <\/em>The movie came out in 1947 and starred Rex Harrison. Now, all these years later, I\u2019m sorry I didn\u2019t watch it, but that\u2019s another story. Maybe it\u2019ll show up on TCM!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to the present. I can\u2019t read other people\u2019s books when I\u2019m writing one of my own. Now, with Before the Trail Goes Cold <\/em>in the hands of my editors, I\u2019m on vacation and for me, vacations are for reading. In the past week, I\u2019ve read two books written by other people and started a third. The first was Fighting Edge, <\/em>Margaret Mizushima’s latest police procedural featuring Mattie Walker, a K-9 handler in small town Colorado. Next came All in a MOMent, <\/em>a fascinating memoir by Mallina Wilson. (More about that in an upcoming post.) And then, ready to do some reading for pleasure, I turned to the books in Bill\u2019s Kindle Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While I\u2019m writing\u2014which is most of the time\u2014he\u2019s either watching TV or reading books. Over the years he\u2019s built up quite a collection, and since our reading tastes are similar, if he likes a particular book or author, chances are I will, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when I opened his Kindle Library, one of the first sets of books that surfaced was a series written by a name-brand mystery writer. The book I just finished writing is set in 2024. One of the characters in the book checks out a volume from Bisbee\u2019s Copper Queen Library, and since he only reads mysteries, while I was writing the story, I checked new mystery releases from about that time and chose that particular book as the one my fictional character chooses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been so busy writing during the course of the last couple of years, I hadn\u2019t read it before, either. As a consequence that\u2019s the book I chose for my first vacation read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once I opened, however, I hit my first Foxes of Harrow <\/em>roadblock. One of the main characters turned out to be headed for the SAME building that plays an important part in Before the Trail Goes Cold. <\/em>A few pages (Make that scrolls!) later, I hit the second. One of the characters in the other author’s book is dealing with issues similar to those of one of the main characters in mine. That\u2019s when I stopped reading, COLD! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the Trail Goes Cold <\/em>is due out in the fall of 2027. In the real world that seems like a long time. In terms of publishing, it\u2019s barely the blink of an eyes. So once my book comes out and when what you\u2019re reading sounds vaguely familiar, please understand that you\u2019ve probably already read that other <\/em>author\u2019s book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is my official notification to the world: Up to this very moment on October 5, 2026, I have never <\/em>read that other book, but I\u2019m about to. Because that\u2019s what vacations have always been for me\u2014a time for reading for pleasure, and at this point, I\u2019m too set in my ways to stop doing that now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More decades ago than I like to mention, I did babysitting at a rate of twenty-five cents an hour, often for neighbors whose houses were within walking distance of ours. One of those families was the Coxs, three homes away. They had two kids\u2014Normie, who was in my younger brother\u2019s class, and a girl whose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t